Mark Wilson

Happy Earth Day everyone! Instead of urging you to recycle all those gadgets that will otherwise leak poison into our planet, we'd rather offer you a more positive, less obvious story to whet your Earth Day appetite. Sila Sutharat runs a Thai chicken stand outside of Bangkok. He roasts 50 chickens a day. And he does it completely through the sun.

Apparently Sutharat uses a complex array of mirrors and glass to focus the sun's rays into one spot a la magnifying glass. As you can see, he wears big goggles and covers himself in white clothing. On a sunny day, the light is so intense that it can cook a 1.6kg chicken in 10 minutes. On an overcast day that number jumps to 20. But on a rainy day, that number drops to never.

He sells the chickens for $5 a pop.

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While it's an amazing story, we can't help but consider the amount of time it takes to cook whole chickens on our grill—over the sun's flames. We're guessing that Sutharat's marinade is heavy in acids, allowing him to almost precook the chickens a bit before roasting them like ants, leaves or your buddy's pants when he's not looking.

In the meantime, if anyone would like to try this at home, feel free to send pics of your failed contraptions, but we're having nothing to do with your burns—on the arms or in the intestines. [bangkok post via inventorspot]